The Glitter Bastard of Better Judgment
There are, in this world and several insulting little worlds adjacent to it, creatures of grace.
There are creatures of dignity, of balance, of solemn purpose. There are moon-stag monks with silver antlers who kneel in frozen meadows and listen to the breathing of stars. There are velvet foxes that carry lost promises in their mouths and bury them under bluebells for spring. There are swans in the Mirror Marsh who mate for life, sing in perfect thirds, and somehow manage to be elegant even while shitting in sacred water.
And then there was Prismwing.
Prismwing, to be blunt, was a magnificent little asshole.
It was impossible to deny the magnificence. Even its enemies—of which there were many, and all of them emotionally exhausted—had to admit that the creature was offensively beautiful. Its wings looked as though someone had skinned a rainbow, dipped the remains in starlight, and then paid a jeweler with very poor boundaries to bedazzle the whole damn thing. Every vein shimmered with impossible color. Tiny galaxies pulsed beneath translucent membranes. Floating spheres of trapped light clung to its body like ornaments on the most expensive and least trustworthy Christmas tree in existence.
It had eyes like liquid opal and the moral center of a raccoon in a liquor store.
Prismwing lived in the glitter-thick folds of Prism Hollow, a realm tucked between human sighs and the last sensible thought before a terrible decision. You could not find Prism Hollow by map, by compass, by prayer, or by being the kind of person who wore practical shoes. It revealed itself only in moments of weakness—when a woman stared at her phone at 1:47 a.m. and whispered, I absolutely should not text him, when a man on his third whiskey said, You know what? I could pull this off, when a tired soul hovered over the “buy now” button while already neck-deep in credit card debt and a deeply unserious need for a rhinestone cowboy hat.
That split second—between common sense and catastrophe—made a sound.
Most humans never heard it.
Prismwing heard it from miles away.
It was a sweet little pop in the fabric of restraint. A fizz. A tempting, juicy shimmer. And when that shimmer escaped the human world, it arrived in Prism Hollow as a bubble: glossy, glowing, deliciously iridescent, each one containing the essence of a regret in its freshest and most intoxicating form.
Some were pale and harmless. A bad haircut. An overshare at brunch. A confidence level unsupported by skill. But the best ones—oh, the expensive ones—burned hot with color. Scarlet for lust-driven stupidity. Gold for ego. Acid green for envy. Electric violet for late-night impulses with legal consequences. Those practically sang.
Prismwing collected them all.
At first, as many addictions begin, it had seemed almost charming.
There was a practical role for creatures like Prismwing once. Long ago, before it developed a taste for excess and spectacle, its kind had been keepers of human spillover. When people made poor choices, the emotional residue had to go somewhere. Regrets, if left wild, could breed. They could sour rivers. Spoil dreams. Make milk curdle in the breast. So the Prismwings had gathered the small shining remnants of human nonsense and stored them in crystal groves until they dimmed and dissolved.
It was dull work, but noble in a faintly thankless, underpaid sort of way.
Prismwing had no interest in thankless nobility.
Prismwing had discovered, quite by accident and then aggressively on purpose, that if one pressed a fresh regret bubble between the tongue and the roof of the mouth, it burst with an exquisite rush of sensation.
One did not merely taste the regret.
One became it.
For a few stolen seconds, Prismwing could feel everything: the swagger before the fall, the heat in the blood, the idiotic confidence, the terrible hope, the exact moment a person said to themselves, Well, fuck it, and launched their life sideways into a decorative wall.
It was glorious.
Imagine bottling the moment before a kiss you know will ruin you. Imagine inhaling the first reckless lie of a perfect affair. Imagine snorting the kind of confidence required to send “u up?” to someone who had already blocked you twice and had every right to use your photograph on a dartboard. That was the flavor of a good regret bubble.
Prismwing had not stood a chance.
Now its bower in Prism Hollow groaned under the weight of thousands.
Bubbles were strung in clusters from silver thorns. They hung from twisted branches like obscene fruit. They floated in carefully curated clouds organized by type, vintage, and entertainment value. One corner contained only career-ending hubris. Another, romantic self-destruction of uncommon artistry. A small, glittering alcove held impulse purchases so stupid they had looped all the way back to genius. Prismwing was especially proud of a bronze-orange orb from a man in Nevada who had, in a fit of sunburned conviction, financed a jet ski, a falcon, and a tantric retreat in the same afternoon.
That one had layers.
Prismwing stroked it affectionately whenever it needed comfort.
The other inhabitants of Prism Hollow had opinions.
“It’s getting worse,” muttered the moth apothecaries, who liked things dry, medicinal, and depressingly responsible.
“It’s an embarrassment to the old ways,” hissed the dew nuns, who believed joy should be filtered through restraint until it was nearly unrecognizable.
“It is, however,” said the beetle accountants, adjusting their spectacles, “an extraordinary curator.”
That last part was true. No one arranged regret like Prismwing. The creature had taste. Debased taste, yes, but taste. It knew which shades of poor judgment complemented one another. It knew how to suspend a cluster of lust, vanity, and denial so the three together made something almost religious in its stupidity. Visitors—disapproving, fascinated, or secretly aroused by disaster—came from neighboring glens to stare at the collection and pretend they were above it.
They were not above it.
Nobody was.
“This,” Prismwing would say, hovering before a trembling strand of sapphire and pink orbs, “is a full bouquet of wedding-week infidelity. Note the brightness at the edges. That’s panic mixing with overpriced champagne.”
Or:
“Over here we have a delightful run of public overconfidence. Three karaoke proposals, one rooftop backflip, two unsolicited opinion threads, and a man who called his boss ‘champ’ during a performance review. Stunning body. Nutty finish.”
It gave tours the way other creatures delivered prophecy.
And because the universe occasionally likes a joke with teeth, Prismwing had become famous.
Not openly, of course. Human beings did not know its name. But they felt it. In the seconds before their own stupidest choices, many had the eerie sensation of being watched. Of something beautiful and untrustworthy hovering just out of sight, rooting for the worst version of them with obscene enthusiasm.
Sometimes they glimpsed a flash of impossible color in the mirror behind them.
Sometimes they heard a tiny, delighted laugh near the wine bottle.
Sometimes, while opening a message they absolutely should have deleted, they smelled flowers, electricity, and the distinct perfume of consequences dressed up as a good idea.
That was Prismwing.
Cheering.
Not because it hated humans, exactly. That would have been cleaner. Simpler. More respectable.
No, Prismwing was genuinely fond of them in the way one might be fond of ducks in a public park: chaotic, filthy, irrational creatures forever one crumb away from a street fight. Humans were ridiculous. They wrapped their urges in ceremony and called it morality. They invented rules and then spent half their lives crawling out from under them with their pants around one ankle and a dumb look on their faces. They said things like “this is not who I am” right before doing something that was painfully who they were.
Prismwing adored them.
Especially when they broke.
On the evening our story begins proper—because naturally all of that was merely the foreplay to the real mess—Prism Hollow was swollen with late spring excess. The air glowed with pollen-lanterns and damp perfume. Every surface looked licked by moonlight. Warm winds rolled in from the human world carrying the rich bouquet of bad cocktails, wedding season panic, linen shirts opened one button too far, and the kind of confidence that only exists at outdoor events where someone has rented decorative lights and overestimated the emotional maturity of the guests.
Prismwing felt it before the first bubble even arrived.
“Oh, this is going to be filthy,” it murmured, rubbing its front legs together.
Then the sky started popping.
One bubble came fizzing in from Chicago, bright coral and silver: a man at a rooftop birthday party had decided to freestyle rap his feelings at his ex and, halfway through, realize too late that the DJ was live-streaming. Lovely texture. Bit of humiliation on the finish.
Another arrived from Phoenix, thick and green-gold: someone had accepted a multi-level marketing pitch because the woman giving it had “calming eyes” and “an energy that felt expensive.” Deliciously stupid.
From Miami came a quartet of hot-pink romantic disasters in rapid succession, each one more lubricated and unnecessary than the last. Prismwing nearly wept with gratitude.
It darted through the incoming bloom like a jewel-tipped maniac, plucking bubbles from the air with ecstatic precision. One tucked beneath an arm. Two looped over an antenna. Another balanced delicately on its head. It laughed as it worked, a tiny sound like wind chimes getting away with something.
By midnight it was breathless, glitter-flecked, and half-feral with delight.
Its collection chamber hummed with new arrivals. Fresh regrets pulsed in every color imaginable, casting obscene little halos over the crystal walls. Prismwing moved among them like a priest in a cathedral built entirely from bad ideas. It touched them. Sorted them. Admired them against the light. Its wings shivered with anticipatory hunger.
It had already sampled three.
A reckless flirtation from St. Louis that tasted like bourbon, lip gloss, and the kind of lie told while making direct eye contact.
A catastrophic tattoo decision from Tulsa, full of adrenaline and absolutely no typography standards.
And a particularly elegant bubble from New York involving revenge, a plus-one, and a silk dress chosen with military intent. That one was almost art.
Prismwing should have stopped there.
Any reasonable creature would have.
Reasonable creatures, however, do not build shrines to catastrophe and then lick the exhibits.
It drifted deeper into the chamber, eyes shining like a thief in a gemstone vault. The newest batch hovered in a low, tempting cloud near the center. Among them, one orb kept catching the light wrong—richer than the rest, with layers of molten violet, bruised blue, and flashing gold at its core.
Prismwing froze.
“Well, hello, you filthy little masterpiece.”
It floated closer.
The bubble was large, nearly the size of Prismwing’s body, and unnaturally warm. Within its slick surface swirled fragments of a scene not yet settled enough to make sense: candlelight, dark fabric, a hand hesitating on a doorframe, the wet shine of a mouth about to say yes to something it damn well knew better than to say yes to.
Fresh. Extremely fresh.
Not even fully formed.
The best kind.
Prismwing circled it once, slowly. Then twice. It could feel the pull in its little crystal-rattling bones. This was no ordinary bad decision. This one had architecture. Stakes. Potential collateral. The kind of regret that wouldn’t just bruise somebody’s pride; it would rearrange furniture in three separate lives.
“Oh, you are vulgar,” Prismwing whispered, delighted.
It should have logged it. Cataloged it. Let it stabilize.
Instead, because addiction is just desire wearing a fake mustache and pretending to be a personality, Prismwing reached out and drew the bubble close to its mouth.
There was, somewhere in the hollow beyond the crystal grove, the faint ringing strike of the warning chimes.
The dew nuns used those when a threshold had been crossed. When some boundary between realms stretched too thin. When a decision in the human world was turning from ordinary stupidity into a thing with claws.
Prismwing ignored them.
“Don’t be dramatic,” it said to absolutely no one.
Then it pressed the warm, shimmering bubble to its tongue.
The orb burst.
And all at once the world split open.
Prismwing convulsed midair, wings flashing wide. The chamber vanished beneath a flood of borrowed sensation so intense it felt like being skinned and kissed at the same time. Heat slammed through it. Hunger. Perfume. Music in another room. The thick, reckless beat of a human heart trying to outrun its own better judgment. A woman’s breath caught in her throat. A man’s hand trembled only once before he hid it. Silk whispered against skin. Someone thought, in a voice already doomed, Just this once.
But there was more.
Much more.
Under the lust came grief. Under the thrill, loneliness sharp enough to peel paint. Under the decision itself was the awful, aching knowledge that this was not an accident. Not really. This had been coming for months. Perhaps years. This regret had roots. It had fed on restraint, politeness, timing, obligation, and all the things humans used to upholster their unhappiness until one spark hit and the whole miserable couch went up in flames.
Prismwing gasped.
It tasted wedding rings and old resentment. Felt the ghost-pressure of unsent messages. Saw a hotel room key turning in slow motion like a blade. Heard laughter too intimate to be innocent. Felt desire wrapped around despair in a knot so tight neither could breathe without the other.
Then, unlike every other regret bubble Prismwing had ever sampled in its greedy, glittering life, this one looked back.
In the middle of that molten rush, some awareness inside the forming catastrophe noticed it.
Not clearly. Not by name. But enough.
Enough for Prismwing to feel, with sudden icy precision, a human gaze slide across the invisible seam between worlds and land directly on its small, stolen soul.
The effect was immediate.
The chamber exploded with light.
Bubbles burst from their hooks and chains in a furious shimmer. Clusters snapped loose. Regrets of every shade ricocheted through the grove like drunken fireworks. Prismwing screamed, tumbled backward, and slammed into a pillar of quartz with enough force to knock six years of curated poor decisions onto the floor.
A thousand emotions detonated at once.
The chamber filled with the scent of panic, tequila, chlorine, sweat, lust, legal exposure, champagne, and one very specific hobby farm purchase no one would ever financially recover from.
Outside, the warning chimes became a frenzied riot.
Inside, Prismwing clung to the crystal pillar, chest heaving, wings trembling violently.
Its opal eyes were wide.
“Well,” it whispered hoarsely to the raining debris of human idiocy, “that seems… bad.”
Another tremor rolled through Prism Hollow.
From somewhere far beyond the grove, deep in the seam between realms, came the unmistakable sound of a door unlocking.
Not a literal door. Nothing so cute.
This was an opening. A breach. A place where human consequence had swollen large enough, hot enough, hungry enough, to begin looking for the thing that had tasted it.
Prismwing, for the first time in a very long and otherwise extremely self-indulgent life, felt sober.
The feeling was disgusting.
All around it, the collected bubbles of other people’s mistakes drifted loose in the air, glowing like a jury of tiny, terrible moons.
And somewhere on the other side of the veil, someone had just made a choice so potent, so intimate, and so catastrophically alive that it had noticed the butterfly feeding on it.
Prismwing stared into the widening shimmer in the chamber wall.
For a brief, awful second, it saw not its own reflection, but the silhouette of a woman in candlelight—still, waiting, one hand at her side and the other closing slowly around what looked very much like a gold room key.
Then the shimmer snapped shut.
Everything went dark except for the bubbles.
Prismwing swallowed hard.
“Ah,” it said to the wreckage, with the calm of a creature standing ankle-deep in gasoline and pretending the smell was probably from someone else’s lantern. “I may have licked something important.”
Withdrawal, Bad Ideas, and the Audacity of Consequences
Prismwing did not panic.
This is important.
It absolutely did not panic.
It did not spiral into a glitter-fueled existential crisis. It did not flap in tight, hysterical circles while muttering profanity like a jeweled lunatic. It did not knock over three carefully curated clusters of mid-tier regrets while attempting to look casual.
It did not, under any circumstances, whisper, oh shit oh shit oh shit with increasing artistic variation.
It hovered.
Very still.
Very dignified.
In the middle of a chamber that looked like a piñata full of terrible life choices had just been beaten open by an angry god.
“…this is fine,” Prismwing said.
A bubble drifted past its face, glowing a soft, apologetic yellow—the kind of regret usually associated with “reply all” emails. It popped against Prismwing’s cheek and released a faint echo of corporate shame.
Prismwing twitched.
“This is absolutely, categorically fine.”
From the outer edges of the grove came the hurried skittering of beetle accountants and the scandalized gasps of dew nuns, their damp robes dragging through scattered fragments of poor decisions. The moth apothecaries fluttered in tight, nervous loops, whispering about contamination, exposure, and the very real possibility that someone—someone—had finally crossed a line that existed for a reason.
“You tasted an active one, didn’t you?” one of the moths hissed.
Prismwing did not turn around.
“Define ‘active,’” it said, already knowing it had no legal ground to stand on.
“Define you absolute menace,” snapped a dew nun, wringing her hands like she wanted to strangle something but had taken vows against fun.
Prismwing flicked a stray shard of regret off its wing and straightened.
“Listen,” it said, slipping into its most offensively charming tone, “in my professional opinion—”
“You do not have a profession,” said a beetle, adjusting its tiny spectacles with venomous precision.
“—in my professional opinion,” Prismwing continued, louder, “this is a temporary fluctuation in the boundary between worlds caused by an unusually flavorful human experience.”
There was a long, horrified silence.
“You licked a live decision,” the moth said flatly.
“I sampled,” Prismwing corrected.
“You ingested a choice that had not yet collapsed into regret,” said another, voice climbing dangerously toward hysteria.
“It was warm,” Prismwing said, as if that explained anything.
“That’s because it was still happening!”
“Well, yes, that’s what made it interesting—”
“You’ve created a feedback loop.”
That landed.
Prismwing blinked.
“…a what now?”
The beetle accountant stepped forward, antennae stiff with the grim satisfaction of someone who finally got to say “I told you so” in a legally binding tone.
“A feedback loop,” it repeated. “You didn’t just taste the regret. You tasted the decision while it was still forming. That means you weren’t observing a finished emotional residue—you were inside it.”
Prismwing’s wings gave a small, involuntary twitch.
“And?”
“And,” said the beetle, with the patience of someone explaining gravity to a falling object, “it felt you back.”
Ah.
Yes.
That.
Prismwing waved a leg dismissively.
“It glanced,” it said. “Barely a brush. A little cross-realm eye contact. Happens all the time.”
“It does not,” said the entire grove.
“Well it did this time, didn’t it?”
“You have anchored yourself to it.”
That one hit differently.
Prismwing stilled.
“…explain,” it said, quieter now.
The moth apothecary drifted closer, its wings shedding fine, medicinal dust that smelled like consequences and paperwork.
“You are now part of that decision,” it said. “Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Structurally.”
Prismwing felt something cold slide down its spine.
“That seems… excessive.”
“If the decision completes,” the moth continued, “it will collapse into a regret like all the others. You’ll get your precious little bubble. Perhaps a very large one. You’ll catalog it. Brag about it. Lick it again like the unhinged goblin you are.”
Prismwing bristled.
“Curator,” it snapped.
“But if it does not complete,” said the beetle, cutting through, “if the human hesitates, if the choice fractures, if awareness creeps in and changes the outcome…”
Prismwing leaned forward despite itself.
“…then what?”
“Then the energy has nowhere to go.”
Silence.
“And when energy like that has nowhere to go,” the dew nun whispered, “it looks for the thing that touched it.”
All eyes turned to Prismwing.
Prismwing, to its credit, did not scream.
It did, however, take one slow step backward.
“That seems,” it said carefully, “like a design flaw.”
“That seems,” said the beetle, “like a you problem.”
Another tremor rippled through the grove.
This one was stronger.
The scattered bubbles trembled midair, their surfaces rippling as if something far away had just taken a very deliberate breath.
Prismwing felt it in its wings.
In its teeth.
In the soft, greedy place inside it that had always wanted more than it should.
“Oh,” it said faintly. “Oh, that’s… not ideal.”
Without waiting for further commentary—because nothing ruins a crisis like a room full of people being right—Prismwing launched itself upward and out of the chamber.
The grove blurred past in a streak of color and bad decisions. It burst into the open air of Prism Hollow, where the sky itself seemed thinner than it had been before, stretched in a way that made the stars look… curious.
Not watching.
Curious.
Which was worse.
“Okay,” Prismwing muttered, pacing midair. “We can fix this. We fix things all the time. We are a fixer of things. A… management professional.”
It flinched at its own words.
“God, that sounded terrible.”
Another pulse hit.
Stronger.
This time, with it, came a flash.
Not a full vision—just a slice, jagged and invasive, shoved into Prismwing’s mind like an uninvited guest who immediately started judging the decor.
A room.
Low light. Gold. Warm. Dangerous.
The woman again.
Closer now.
Her hand on the door.
Her breath uneven.
Her thoughts—
This is stupid. This is so fucking stupid.
A pause.
But I want it.
The door creaked.
The vision snapped.
Prismwing recoiled, wings slamming back against its body.
“Nope,” it said immediately. “Absolutely not. We are not doing this. We are not… participating.”
Another pulse.
Sharper.
Another flash.
The inside of the room now.
A man, already there. Already too close to the line. Already aware of exactly what he was about to become if he didn’t stop—and already not stopping.
Say something normal.
He did not say something normal.
The vision fractured into heat and proximity and the thick, electric silence before impact.
Gone again.
Prismwing gagged.
“Oh, that is intimate,” it said, horrified and, against all better judgment, a little impressed. “That is extremely… wow.”
It shook itself violently.
“Focus. Focus, you glittery idiot.”
Think.
If the decision completed, everything would collapse into a standard regret. Big, juicy, delicious, possibly award-winning. Safe.
If it didn’t…
Prismwing glanced toward the thinning sky.
“…less safe.”
Which meant—
“We need it to happen,” Prismwing said aloud.
The words hung there.
Clear.
Terrible.
Logical.
Behind it, somewhere in the grove, the dew nuns began praying loudly at the exact same moment the beetle accountants started shouting about liability.
Prismwing ignored them.
“We just… encourage things along,” it said, pacing faster now. “A nudge. A whisper. A tiny little push toward catastrophic life choices. That’s basically what we do anyway. This is just… targeted.”
Another pulse hit.
Harder.
The sky flickered.
For a split second, the veil between worlds thinned enough for Prismwing to see through it—not just a flash this time, but a sustained glimpse.
The room.
The woman, halfway inside now.
The man stepping closer.
The space between them shrinking to something that could no longer pretend to be innocent.
And in the mirror behind them—
A reflection that didn’t quite match.
A flicker of color that didn’t belong.
A shape with wings.
Watching.
The woman froze.
Just for a second.
Her eyes flicked to the mirror.
“…did you—” she started.
The vision snapped like a wire pulled too tight.
Prismwing reeled backward, heart hammering.
“Oh, that’s bad,” it said, breathless. “That’s very bad. She’s noticing. We are not supposed to be noticeable.”
Another tremor.
Stronger still.
The seam in the sky above Prism Hollow stretched, a thin, shimmering scar widening just enough to let something else through—not a form, not yet, but a pressure. Awareness. Direction.
It was looking.
Looking for the thing that had tasted it.
Looking for Prismwing.
“Right,” Prismwing said, voice tight. “New plan.”
It hovered in place, wings buzzing with nervous energy.
“We fix this the only way we know how.”
It turned toward the seam.
Grinned.
And in a move that would have gotten it permanently banned from every respectable realm in existence—if respectable realms had any real power in situations like this—it dove straight toward the thinning veil between worlds.
“If I’m part of the decision,” Prismwing said, voice sharpening with reckless delight, “then I might as well make sure it’s a good one.”
Behind it, the warning chimes shattered into a deafening, hysterical chorus.
And ahead—
The door finished opening.
The Catastrophe That Looked Back
There are moments in existence when a line is crossed so completely, so enthusiastically, that it does not so much blur as it packs a bag, leaves a forwarding address, and sends a postcard that reads, you knew what this was.
Prismwing hit that moment at full speed.
The seam between worlds did not open like a door.
It tore.
Not violently—no, that would have been mercifully dramatic. This was worse. This was a soft, elegant yielding, like silk parting under a blade, like breath slipping between lips that should have stayed apart. The kind of opening that suggested consent, even when it absolutely should not have.
Prismwing slipped through.
And for the first time in its glitter-soaked, consequence-avoiding existence, it entered the human world not as a rumor, not as a shimmer, not as a distant encouragement of poor judgment—but as something that could be seen.
Faintly.
But enough.
The room was smaller than it had felt inside the bubble.
Isn’t that always the way?
Golden light dripped from low lamps, thick and flattering and entirely untrustworthy. The air smelled like perfume layered over nerves. Music thudded faintly through the wall from somewhere far enough away to feel safe and close enough to be an excuse.
The woman stood just inside the doorway.
The man stood too close.
The space between them was no longer theoretical.
Prismwing hovered near the ceiling, wings casting fractured light across the walls like a disco ball that had made terrible life choices and refused to apologize for them.
“Alright,” it whispered to itself. “Simple. Elegant. We nudge. They fall. Everybody regrets it later. I get a premium vintage and we never speak of this again.”
It rubbed its front legs together.
“Professional.”
The woman exhaled slowly.
“This is—” she started.
“Yeah,” the man said, equally aware and equally unwilling to be the adult in the room.
There it was.
The hesitation.
The crack.
The exact place where Prismwing lived.
It darted downward, unseen by both—
—except that it wasn’t entirely unseen.
The mirror caught it first.
A flicker.
A streak of impossible color.
The woman’s eyes snapped up.
“Did you—”
“No,” the man said too quickly.
“There was something—”
Prismwing froze midair.
“Don’t ruin this,” it hissed, as if they could hear it. “You are on the edge of something spectacularly stupid. Stay focused.”
It hovered closer.
Close enough now to feel them.
Their heat.
Their nerves.
The long, slow accumulation of every small decision that had led to this one.
It reached out—not physically, not quite—but in that subtle, invasive way it always had, brushing against the seam of thought where doubt lived.
Just a little push.
A whisper.
You want this.
The man swallowed.
“We don’t have to—” he said, which is the opening line of every terrible decision that absolutely happens.
The woman laughed once, sharp and disbelieving.
“No, we don’t,” she said.
Silence.
Prismwing leaned in.
But you will.
The air tightened.
The distance closed.
And then—
It happened.
Not the kiss.
Not yet.
Something else.
Something Prismwing had not accounted for in its deeply flawed, glitter-addled understanding of humans.
The woman stepped back.
Just one step.
But enough.
Enough to break the momentum.
Enough to let something other than desire into the room.
Something quieter.
Heavier.
“I can’t,” she said.
Prismwing recoiled as if slapped.
“No no no no no—”
The man blinked.
“You just said—”
“I know what I said,” she snapped, then softened, then wavered. “I know what I want. That’s not the problem.”
Prismwing surged forward again, frantic now.
Yes it is. It is exactly the problem. Solve it the fun way.
The woman closed her eyes.
“This doesn’t end small,” she said, more to herself than to him. “You know that, right?”
And there it was.
The fracture.
The decision splitting.
Not collapsing into regret.
Not completing.
Becoming something else.
Something with no clean place to go.
Prismwing felt it immediately.
The pressure.
The buildup.
The energy it had touched now refusing to settle.
“Finish it,” Prismwing hissed, desperation leaking through its usual charm. “Just do the stupid thing. You’re so good at it. I believe in you.”
The man stepped forward again.
“We don’t have to make it bigger than it is,” he said, which was, again, exactly how things became bigger than they were.
The woman laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“It’s already bigger than it is,” she said.
She turned away.
And just like that—
The decision ended.
Not in fire.
Not in catastrophe.
But in restraint.
Quiet, infuriating, deeply inconvenient restraint.
Back in Prism Hollow, that would have produced a small, dull bubble. A regret of inaction. Pale. Unsatisfying. Barely worth cataloging.
But this—
This was not back in Prism Hollow.
This was mid-collapse.
This was energy with nowhere to go.
And it knew exactly where it had been touched.
Prismwing felt the turn.
Felt the attention snap toward it like a predator finally locking onto prey.
“Oh,” it said softly. “Oh, that’s not good at all.”
The room darkened.
Not physically.
Perceptually.
Like the light itself had decided to mind its own business.
The air thickened.
The space between moments stretched.
And from that stretched, impossible place—
Something looked back.
Not the woman.
Not the man.
Something underneath the decision itself.
The accumulation of everything that had almost happened.
Everything that had been fed, built, nurtured, and then denied.
It did not have a face.
It did not need one.
It was pressure.
Expectation.
All the versions of this night that would now never exist.
And it was angry.
Prismwing tried to move.
It could not.
Its wings locked in place, frozen mid-beat.
“Now listen,” it said quickly, slipping back into its favorite defense mechanism: audacity. “We may have gotten off on the wrong foot here—”
The thing surged.
Not forward.
Inward.
Into Prismwing.
The impact was silent.
Total.
Prismwing screamed.
Not out loud.
Inside.
Its body lit up with every unfinished version of that night. Every path not taken slammed into it at once. The kiss that didn’t happen. The fight that would have followed. The unraveling. The aftermath. The quiet devastation. The relief. The what-ifs. The late-night replays. The years of wondering.
All of it.
All at once.
Prismwing convulsed, light fracturing violently off its wings.
“Too much,” it gasped. “That’s—there’s too many—this is—”
It had spent its entire existence tasting moments.
Never living them.
Now it was drowning in them.
The thing pressed deeper.
Filling every hollow space Prismwing had ever kept empty for the next indulgence.
There was no room.
No separation.
No clean boundary between observer and participant.
Prismwing broke.
Not shattered.
Worse.
It opened.
Light poured out of it in a violent, prismatic bloom.
The room vanished.
The hollow surged back into existence.
And in the center of it all—
Where Prismwing had been—
A new bubble formed.
Enormous.
Blinding.
Layered in colors that did not have names because no one had ever been stupid enough to combine them before.
It pulsed.
Alive.
Not a regret.
Not exactly.
Something else.
Something… aware.
Inside it—
Prismwing floated.
Small.
Very, very sober.
It blinked slowly.
Looked around at the walls of shifting possibility pressing in from every side.
Felt, for the first time, what it had so gleefully consumed in others.
Weight.
Consequences.
The long tail of a choice not made.
“…well,” Prismwing said faintly, wings barely twitching.
It drifted a little, turning in the vast, luminous sphere of its own doing.
“That seems… educational.”
Outside the bubble, the grove was silent.
The dew nuns stared.
The moths hovered, stunned.
The beetle accountants wrote nothing at all.
The great, impossible orb pulsed once more, casting wild, fractured light across Prism Hollow.
And somewhere deep inside it, the Prismwing Collector of Shiny Regrets—
—had finally become one.
The Prismwing Collector of Shiny Regrets doesn’t have to stay trapped in the story world—this dazzling little disaster can invade your walls, desk, and daily bad decisions in style. You can bring the cosmic chaos home as a framed print or canvas print, turn the glittering madness into a beautifully infuriating puzzle, or carry a little shimmering poor judgment with you on a tote bag. For those who like their chaos more portable, it also works beautifully as a spiral notebook or a dangerously pretty sticker. However you bring it into your world, this artwork keeps all the luminous mischief, cosmic beauty, and deliciously bad energy of the tale fully intact.
